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MEMOKJES OF THE METK0roLI8:(g 

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Oi\ THAIKt!6IVfi\G DAY 

November 24, 1853, 



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THE FIliST PRESBYTERIAN 



r>Y REV. JJVKOTn .^rNDKllLAXi), 



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WA.SIIINGTOX; 
n^M. M. MORRISON S: VA) 



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THE 



MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS 

A DISCOURSE 



DELIVIRED 



ON THAIKSGIVING DAY, 

November 24, 1853, 



THE FIKST PKESBYTERIAN CHUKCH. 



BY REV. BYRON SUNDERLAND, 

THE PASTOE. 



(PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.) 




5 WASHINGTON: 

WM. M. MORRISON & CO. 
1853. 



'a 






NOTE. 

The following Discourse was delivered on the occasion of Thanksgiving, 
November 24th, 1853, observed, in accordance with the recommendation of the 
Mayor of the City of Washington, as a day of public worship and thanksgiving 
to Almighty God. In consenting to its publication, the Author yields to the 
solicitation of friends, on whose judgment he relies more than on his own, since 
he is well aware that very little statistical or general information is communi- 
cated in the sermon. It was impossible, in the brief time allotted to its delivery, 
to do more. But it is not a case where accurate and thorough information from 
other sources is wanting. There are many of the citizens of Washington, 
doubtless, now living, who can call up interesting reminiscences of the rise and 
progress of the city. With most of these, however, it has not been my good 
fortune to have become acquainted. I ought, notwithstanding, in this con- 
nection, to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. George AVatterston and Mr. 
John Sessford for the kind assistance they rendered me in communicating a 
great variety of facts; and to those gentlemen I would particularly refer any 
who may be desirous of extending their acquaintance with the history of the 
Metropolis. Several books have been already published on the subject ; and I 
have only to offer this discourse to my fellow-citizens, as the feeble tribute of a 
comparative stranger, both for the kindness with which I have been received 
among them, and for the testimony of the great inheritance which, under God, 
we have received in common from our fathers. 

THE AUTHOR. 

Washington, December, 1853. 



I 



I 



DISCOURSE. 



2d Kings ii. 19 ; Psalm xliv. 1 ; and Psalm Ixxviii. 4. 

"And the men of the city s&id unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation 
of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth." "We have heard vrith our ears, 
God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days in the times 
of old." "We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation 
to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that 
he hath done." 

Love of God, love of country, and love of home, are the deepest 
and purest sentiments to which humanity is competent. They 
promote both philanthropy and gratitude. They kindle the 
present by recollections of the past, and by the hopes of the future. 
They are the soul of that wild, eternal Psalm, whose theme is 
Providence, repeated from sire to son in endless generations. 

I need scarcely remind you that on this day of public thanks- 
giving to Jehovah, in accordance with the recommendations of 
both civil and ecclesiastical authority, and in observance of a 
custom now almost universal throughout the Confederacy, it is 
our privilege as Americans, and especially as inhabitants of the 
Federal City, to bring into the sanctuary, and to lay on the altars 
of Religion, our public and solemn thanks. The joy and the 
grandeur of this moment fill me with emotions which no language 
can express. I see a nation of my countrymen covered with 
unspeakable glory bending reverently before Almighty God in 
devout and grateful recognition of his parental solicitude. It is 
enough, my brethren. It is the greatest of sublimities I shall ever 



witness beneath the sun ! To say all wliicli the vision of this 
day stimulates, demands a stouter frame and a more burning 
utterance than belong to my poor nature. It is only a few feeble 
strains of the great Epic of my country, here and there a faint 
snatch of her song of wonder now rolling from the tuneful harp 
of Providence as it is swept by the hand of the Almighty, that 
we can pretend to rehearse before you — a few things that the 
fathers have told us of the work that was done in their days, that 
they may not be hidden from the children, and that the name 
and the praise of the Lord of Hosts may never be forgotten ! 

We have, therefore, in the spirit of the text, selected as a theme 
for the present occasion, 

"THE MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS." 
or those recollections of the City of Washington, which, in its 
rise and progress, not only illustrate the patronage of the Supreme 
Ruler of the Universe, but also, from their inherent beauty and 
thrilling power, serve to link ourselves in a romantic interest 
with those who went before, and those who shall come after us ; 
nay more, the remembrance of our beginning must prevail to 
heighten not only the fervor of our patriotism, but also the 
motives of our devout thanksgiving to the King of kings, when 
recited in contrast with the vicissitudes of an earlier history. 
The sun of our glory has just opened his portals, while the day 
of many an ancient capital has already gone out in darkness. 
To take a single example : It seems, from the allusion of the text, 
that so long ago as the times of the prophet Elisha, there stood 
a city in the East, the cradle of the human race, whence rose the 
nations of the earth. It was the far-famed Jericho, which, once 
blasted by the curse of Joshua, lay desolate for centuries. At 
length, rebuilt and reared among the hills, as ours to-day, it con- 
tinued for ages the seat of learning and of laws, the resort of 
priests and prophets, and the ornament of Israel. But the 



Roman besom at length swept over it, the times were changed, 
and now it is but a wretched village of about fifty habitations ! 

The old town, once trodden by the feet of patriarchs and apos- 
tles, has sunken into a heap of ruins. From the regions which 
once its towers illumined, the power and greatness of human 
life have been transferred. We have only to change the scene, 
and come round half the globe to where we stand to-day, and 
one might think that Arethusa's fount, which whilom flowed 
under the sea and burst up in the Sicilian Isle, had again 
appeared to lave the feet of this Queen of the Western Empire, 
and to make her glorious with the symbols of our national dis- 
tinction. The course of human events has planted here the 
proudest pillar of government which the sun now shines upon. 
It is at length discovered how the Builder of the World, for- a 
generation yet unborn, reared up this glorious circumference of 
hills, and overhung the ardent firmament, and rolled together 
the streams of yonder river, and strung through the vales which 
his hand scooped out the silver threads of springs, and clothed 
the slopes with verdure, and fringed the landscapes with patri- 
archal trees, and guarded in long solitude even the swamp and 
the marsh and the fen, whose surface of reeds and samphire shook 
nightly to the rustling winds, that it might be for a place of habi- 
tation when the time should come, and a theatre of stirring 
scenes in one of the grandest ages of human achievement, and 
for a centre of exploit to a rising people whose career was to be 
unparalleled in the annals of the world. It seems like a vision 
of the night. Not many hundred moons ago, the wild Indian 
erected his wigwam where now we hear the busy hum of marts, 
where now our dwellings and churches stand, and where to-day 
we are assembled to worship God. The feuds of the Powhatans 
and Monacans are ended ; and where once the council-fire was 
kindled in sight of yonder hill, the red men have vanished like 



the withered leaves which the winds of autumn are scattering, and 
which the next spring-breath may never find. It is but yesterday 
that the amphictyon of savage life was broken up, and on the 
very site of its ruins the prouder dome of the pale face has been 
upreared. It is but yesterday that, with the Capitol and the 
Presidential mansion, the Federal city has sprung up and these 
present thousands were gathered together — but a day since the 
hive was set and the Metropolitan swarm came in ! 

And there are those in the assembly to-day, I doubt not, who 
are familiar with it all, for the story of the beginning is no 
Grecian myth. No cloudy fable rests upon our origin ; for when 
the oldest of our citizens were but children and youth, the found- 
ations of the Metropolis were laid. These thronging memories 
will come back to-day and fill up with living images the meagre 
outline of the retrospect, which we want both the time and the 
information more fully to exhibit. 

Go back then, in fancy, over the last portion of the eighteenth 
century. Standing on yonder hill, now crested by the nation's 
Capitol, call to mind the old patents and the lines of the first 
surveys which had been made a hundred years before, for Rich- 
ard Pinner, and William Langworth, and Captain Troop, and 
Francis Pope, who, seeing that his name was Pope, thought it no 
robbery to be equal with the Pope, and appropriated to his estate 
and the stream that watered it, the august names of Rome and 
the Tiber. His prophecy, which lingered for a century around the 
hill, has been at length accomplished, and now the Capitoline 
overlooks us in more than Roman majesty. As you stand gazing in 
after years from the same position, there lie outstretched around 
the lands of succeeding proprietors, on the one hand declining to 
the river's brink, and on the other expanding in copse and forest, 
in ravine and meadow-land, away to the circling hills. There 
is Duddington pasture ; there is the house of Daniel Carroll ; 



yonder of Notley Young; and yonder still of David Burns. 
There are the uplands, and the orchards green, and the old burial- 
places of the dead. The lark springs up from the dewy corn, 
singing for joy away to the gates of heaven, and the plover 
whistles shrill at the nightfall in yonder sedge. In many a foot- 
path, and by many a spring, the children wander plucking the wild 
fruit and startling a merry echo in the deep woods. Sportsmen 
and fishermen haunt the shoals of Anacostia, whose rude old 
wharves scarce break the morasses and the water-courses which 
crowd over the site of the present avenue of Pennsylvania, and 
end away in the northern slashes. All the home scenes of incip- 
ient English life lie spreading around, and there is yet no sign 
of the coming grandeur which is in part to supersede the 
unbroken picture of rural loveliness which beams from the ham- 
lets of Hamburg and Carrollsburg, and bursts from distant 
Arlington, from the heights of Georgetown, from Prospect Hill, 
and from the silver sheen of waters playing far away in moon- 
light to the sea. 

But we had our Elisha, on whom the mantle of all the prophets 
had descended. He had smitten the waters of the Revolution, 
and passed over in triumph. Long years before, he had from 
his rough canoe explored the course of the Potomac, surveying 
with proud and patriotic eye the future seat of Empire. You 
will call to mind the act of Congress of 1790, and all the legis- 
lation both of Maryland and Virginia through which the desire 
of Washington was finally accomplished. Y''ou will call to mind 
that day when he came, like the seer of old, to perfect the titles 
and to prepare for the foundations ; and the men of Georgetown, 
like those of Jericho, said unto him, " Behold, I pray thee, the 
situation of the city is pleasant, as my lord seeth." You will call 
to mind the negotiations of those terms and the names of the 
men who ceded to the Government the territory of the District 



lu 

of Columbia. You will call to mind tlie 15th day of April, 
1791, when the corner-stone of the District was set up below 
Alexandria, and in the public concourse the minister of the cross 
pronounced the prayers of the infant nation ; and how, soon after 
the other corner-stones were set, and the soil thus measured was 
consecrated thenceforth and forever to the cause of American 
greatness and to the religion of God. 

Then followed a decade of years preliminary to the coming 
of Congress and the full establishment of the Government here 
in the year 1800. You may call to mind the men who, in the 
close of the last century, came to stake out the site of the city, 
and from the wilderness yet unsubdued to cast the streets and 
avenues and the public squares, and to mark many a height and 
many a lawn for the reception of the sacred monuments. You have 
heard of Johnson, and Stewart, and Carroll, the commissioners 
of L'Enfant and EUicott, the engineers ; and of Hoban, Thorn- 
ton, and Hallet, the architects. You have heard how they toiled 
till the plan of the city was completed, and the first great struc- 
tures of our Republican Independence were about to be erected. 
You will call to mind the coming of Washington, in the month 
of September, 1793, to lay the corner-stone of the Capitol ; the 
day of the procession, with fife and drum, on a fallen tree across 
the Tiber, and up the narrow footway, amid the oaks and under- 
wood, to the memorable spot. You will remember, who saw that 
sight, the majestic form and the reverend countenance of the 
Old Hero as he lifted up his voice and spake to you. You will 
remember — for such a memory can never fade — how he passed 
away amid the solemn grandeur of the hour, and ever after from 
the heights of Vernon turned his anxious yet exultant gaze 
towards the Metropolis, till he fell asleep ; and now, where " the 
Father of his Country" reposes, the nations make their foremost 
pilgrimage. 



11 

The seed was sown, and the scions of the city were putting 
forth. The old roads gave place to new-made streets ; the even- 
ing lights grew thicker ; the marshes waxed small and thin ; 
the bloom of civilization was gathering, on the young flower 
just bursting from the shadows of the wilderness. The times of 
Adams and Jefferson succeeded ; three thousand souls already 
made up the population of the place. The Congress came, and 
the act of incorporation followed in 1802. The municipal func- 
tions went into operation, and the Metropolis, now chartered in 
the sacred name of Washington, was fairly launched on her path- 
way of renown to turn back never. The mayors came, of whom 
Robert Brent stood first in the succession, whose worthy follow- 
ers, even until now, no doubt many of you can remember. The 
fathers of the city council came ; the physicians and the lawyers 
and the judges came ; the noble artists came ; the men of inven- 
tion and of genius came, — and scattered their imperishable works 
among us. 

The old ferry-boat which once plied from this to Alexandria 
was succeeded by nobler vessels. The scanty stores of Stettinius 
and Sommerville were superseded by long, magnificent blocks, 
adorned and filled by all the heraldry of merchantmen. The 
straitened inn of the stammering and eccentric Pitt could no 
longer accommodate the strangers ; and there came in its stead, one 
after another, the spacious boarding-houses and the splendid hotels 
rising upon the avenues. The spirit of enterprise, fresh blown from 
the battle of freedom, was abroad on every breeze and inspiring 
every motion. You may remember the inscription on the sign of 
Peter Rodgers : "Peter Rodgers, saddler, from the green fields of 
Erin and Tyranny to the green streets of Washington and Lib- 
erty. See Copenhagen — view the seas — 'tis all blockade — 'tis all 
a blaze! The seas shall be free ! Yankee Doodle, keep it up." 



12 

Droll as this language sounds to the ear, a sentiment of might j 
import still swung in it before the door of the exiled Irishman. 
It bounded in the old men's veins, and flashed on the ruddy 
cheeks of children. It was the price of blood ; and the people 
of the country and the Metropolis felt that it must never perish. 

On went the young city in wealth, in trade, in manufactures — 
but more than all, in public institutions, in monuments of elegance, 
and taste, and refinement ; in foundations of charity, of science, 
of chivalry. The gentlemen of the Press came. The Ministers 
of the Cross came. The Presidents came. The Cabinets came. 
Congress succeeded Congress ; and those Titan brothers. Clay, 
Calhoun, and Webster, long wrestled with antagonists in the 
forum of the Senate. Alas ! they are no longer ; — each lying in 
the dreamless sleep in his own place, far apart, as though a por- 
tion of our institutions, with them, had passed away. 

And, indeed, it were long to tell of the great works done by 
herculean efforts, as the men multiplied and the town went on 
increasing. It were long to tell of companies that pitched those 
tanks on yonder bottom-land at the beginning of the Mall, and 
made a fire-place whence all the lamps are lighted along the 
streets at night, turning even so much gas to good account — to 
tell of times when the steam-horse came, and neighed so loud 
that his shrill whinny startled the echoes on all the hills. It were 
long to tell how they caught also that wilder steed, which before 
had bounded free over all the continent of clouds unbridled, and 
tamed him down with juices in a cup and long, slim wires, and 
made him gentle as a fawn — the bearer of swift messages to all 
points. It were long to tell how they planted the forges, and 
set up the machinery at the Navy Yard, as though Vulcan had 
indeed opened his workshop once more, that he might point for 
desolation the thunderbolts of Jove — ^how they reared the Ob- 



13 

servatory, to be for the light-house of the sky, where the geniu3 
of numbers out-rivals the imagination itself — how they have 
magnified the Departments of Government, where the machinery 
of the mighty Republic is silently but sublimely working off the 
burdens of empire. It were long to tell how they have received 
the tribute of the dying Smithson, and built a pile which, bear- 
irg his name, will perpetuate long the memory of his princely 
generosity — how they have garnished the pleasure-grounds and 
the public edifices with the immortal creations of such minds as 
Causici, Capellano, Persico, Greenough, Trumbull, and Mills. 
And how, at length, they have commenced to rearj so long de- 
ferred, that greatest pillar of American glory, the monument of 
the nation, where, in the Coliseum of our gathering greatness, 
shall be assembled the sculptured conclave of all our heroes 
around the form of Washington ! 

Ah ! little now does the giddy maiden, whose tiny foot scarce 
touches the pavement over which she skips, flushed out in all the 
latest styles of fashion — and little does the dapper young gentle- 
man, in his huge cravat and boots, fresh made of patent-leather, 
as he goes roistering from billiard-rooms and restaurants, wot 
of the things here done by the consuming labor of hand and 
brain, where but a little ago the grey heron and the bittern 
hovered about the pools, and the fishermen spread their nets to 
dry in the noon-day sun. But thus the city's life unfolded 
through all the times of transformation and of progress, with 
new diflficulties daily overcome, and a real effort to make the 
future better than the past has been or than the present is ; while 
in this advancement the woods were cleared, the ditches dug? 
the hills cut down, the banks erected, and time and sweat and 
money were poured out like water, till on the new arena no man 
can look without a just enthusiasm bearing him away delighted 
from this consecrated spot, and in the wrapt vision of all the 



14 

sovereign States which circle round, causing him to exclaim in 
the language of the patriotic muse — 

•' Lives there a man with soul bo dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land !" 

We have seen as best we might, in the brief time allowed us, 
the first fibres of that web which were gathered up from the 
forest land, from the pestilent marsh, and from the Indian trail 
— spun from the very moss that grew upon the trees, and strung 
by the pebbles that shone in the springs and by the edge of 
streams, as delicate at the beginning as the spider's webb. But 
our weavers came — the strong men, and hundreds of noble names 
we ought to name, but have no space ; and each working in his 
way, they collected the filiments from the ruggedness of nature ; 
they of their diligence fixed the warp in the loom, and the great 
shuttle of Providence was given them, and they wove the texture 
which soon must other hands continue ; thus weaving in common 
with our countrymen the ever-widening fabric of the Metropolis, 
spangled with diamonds, and furnishing, we hope, at some distant 
day the mighty turban of purple and gold that shall sit, in the 
future coronation of Humanity, on the brow of the American 
Republic, illumined by the triple stars of Science, Government, 
and Religion ! Such, my brethren, are some of the memories — 
would to heaven there were none other worse of this monumental 
city ! — all themes of grateful reminiscence — making us thankful 
for what our fathers did, and thankful that on this day of thanks- 
giving we had their history to record and their memories to 
remember. 

And now the web is wider and the woof thickens, and we have 
already become a force. Fifty thousand people, such as you are, 
cannot be together in any spot on earth, much less here, at the 
heart, without being a force — a fountain of influence, giving and 



15 

taking with every section of the nation, and every quarter of the 
world, still growing to a larger force, and ending, perhaps, 
never as a force, I It remains, therefore, under the hallowed im- 
pulses of these passing recollections, to address to you some 
practical considerations which may not be unaccordant with the 
spirit of this occasion. Indeed, from the prominence on which we 
stand, we would, if it were possible, summon around us every class 
of our fellow-citizens, and would urge upon them the sentiments 
of patriotism, philanthropy, and piety, which so many glorious 
recollections of our past are eminently adapted to inspire. 

I. I would appeal to the massive millions of the people, 
and say, Your birth-right, Americans, has cost too much to be 
squandered — it promises too much for the future to be neglected. 
Remember, therefore, to preserve the Republic az it is — des- 
tined only to a just progress and expansion. There are many 
motives for this ; our Government is the asylum of the world. 
We have drawn our blood from the Huguenot, from the Norman, 
from the Saxon, and the Celt. Men of all religions and of all 
philosophies are here ; the emigrant and the exile from all quar- 
ters of the globe. They are our fellow-citizens, nursing the 
same shaggy breast of our common mother, which, out of the 
wilds of nature, was free from the first to give sustenance to all. 
It has been a thing taken for granted here from the beginning by 
our fathers and by ourselves, and so I hope it may ever be, that 
personal freedom, and private judgment, and the rights of con- 
science, so far as each is competent to them in his condition, are 
things too sacred to every human being to be invaded with im- 
punity. It was seen that life had no impulse without liberty, and 
liberty no safeguards but virtue and intelligence; wherefore, 
the arms of the country were ever open to whatsoever human 
brother chose to abide with us ; so that we had Jews and Ger- 
mans, Yankees and Indians, the sons of Ireland, the emigrants 



16 

of France and Spain, and many nations, and the children of 
Ham. We had all foreigners, as when Jerusalem was filled with 
the representatives of the Eastern World. And thus far we have 
been more happy and more prosperous under the working of 
those great institutions which our fathers left us than any people 
hitherto. Preserve the Republic, then, in the name of God and 
Humanity, as it is. There was at times a love of liberty in the 
nations of antiquity, but they had more to contend with than we. 
Between tyranny and licentiousness, they could not see what 
kind of government was best ; their revolutions were quick, turbu- 
lent, and extreme. Only France, among the moderns, can pre- 
sent a parallel, and that is because she has no religion, and 
has had none for a thousand years. But the want of faith in 
God is not the only danger to free governments, though from 
the want of faith most other dangers spring. If there be a 
danger to our own beloved country, it is in the levity and incon- 
stancy which ruined, ages since, so many famous people. Deep 
meditation, stern contentment with fortune, and a hard, tough 
patience, is what this people must cultivate : these things, in this 
age of activity and effervescence, are likely to dwindle out of us. 
If we .would not share the fate of the Greeks, we must not be as 
volatile as the Greeks ; we must take care not to degenerate from 
the old stock of the men of the Revolution. It is possible for 
this people, instead of remaining like the granite of their moun- 
tains, to become rather like a bottle of hartshorn ; and if so, we 
can expect but little firmness where so many winds are blowing ; 
for the bottle will some cunning hand uncork, and away will fly 
the spirits. 

But other nations had not our civil polity. They generally 
had but two parts, and no third to balance. The affairs of state 
were simply a bone of contention between the aristocracy and 
the mobocracy, the senate and the rabble. Noav, all govern- 



1'7 

ment must sway ; authority will not stand still. So subtle and so 
mobile are the elements of humanity, that you might as well think 
to fix the waves of the ocean by petrifaction as to suppose that 
so great a matter as the government of states can be made to 
stand still. And why ? If a chair in which a man is to sit be 
supported on the shoulders of living creatures — millions of men, 
for example — would it not be thought a thing incredible, yea, 
against nature, for those men to hold that chair perfectly still ? 
Even so ia the authority of human government. It will incline 
as the people incline — either to a centralization of power, or to a 
diffusion of power — either to despotism or anarchy. The wisdom 
of a polity is to make these movements and counter-movements 
check one another ; and it was never so done as in our own country. 
We have a constitution which procures that, while the sea of the 
masses is lashed into tumult, the chair of state remains untilted. 
"We live under laws, both national, state, and municipal, most 
singularly constructed to avert the excess or the abuse of 
political power. The genius of our polity seems almost to have 
been inspired. Oh, then, by all that is sacred, let us preserve it 
as it is ! May the Almighty save us from doing anything to darken 
a prospect which — not all brightn*ess, to be sure, nor yet all 
clouds — is growing and will grow into the glister of a perfect day, 
if not overcast by the ambition of the few and the fanaticism 
of the many ! 

Again, other nations have fallen through the spirit of arro- 
gance. To their high notions of wisdom and prowess they blindly 
trusted. They had great land victories and great naval success ; 
their treasuries overflowed. Prosperity reacted ; their vigilance 
was gone, and they fell a prey to foreign foes, or the still more 
bitter retributions of intestine war. "We, too, as a nation have 
had our similar success, which, of course, is like contagion in the 
land ; and one town, tingling with the applause of triumphs by 



18 

our common arms, sends the same thrill into another, till the 
continent trembles with the martial spirit which has kindled 
through the millions. It is a pitfall into which many states 
have plunged before us. A nation lusty with sinews and full of 
wealth, when so inflamed, is on the verge to lose freedom. The 
grosser passions are then stimulated, and abandonment to the 
crisis of the hour comes on apace. Happy are we, however, thus 
far in this country, that peaceful labor restrains this tendency to 
ruin. The mass of the people are heavy workers, and the whole 
domain of the Republic shakes with the vigor of humanity in its 
prime ; and though floods of wealth are pouring in, and property 
is rising, and the acres just shorn of woods are more costly, still 
the national industry increases, and each man may earn his meal. 
All this tells up so much our happy condition as a people, for 
Freedom loves hardy children. It is a sign of her decay when, 
out of huge and magnificent palaces, there goes not every day a 
man to some thorough labor of life. Honest labor is no enemy 
to our happiness and elevation, and so I hope every man and 
woman who boasts these immunities may have it for as high an 
honor to be a sturdy worker. Work intensifies thought, and 
intense thought will save our country, under the guidance of God, 
from the evils of levity and arrogance, and wealth and conquest. 
Ah ! then, Americans, do not only love liberty, but conceive also its 
true idea ; study its conditions in man and in society ; and, as the 
Republic is for you the conservator of this, again let me urge, by 
the broken states and shattered constitutions of the past, by the 
voice of your glorious future, by your own spirit of patriotism, 
(which is none other than the equal love of your whole country, 
no single part excluded,) by the memories of our fathers, by the 
destiny of universal man — yea, and by the sanctions of our most 
holy religion, to cleave to the Constitution and to the Confed- 
eracy as it is ; and so may God pity you as ever you depart from 



19 

this substance of the nation's life, or suffer the banner which it 
sports to trail ! Oh ! where shall men look for succor when those 
ensigns which wave beside the dome of the Capitol shall have 
ceased to symbolize the patriotism of the nation, or float no 
longer in mockery of a people that have lighted themselves to 
destruction ! 

II. I call, therefore, upon the gentlemen of the Press to diffuse 
these sentiments, in every edition of book or journal, to the 
remotest dwelling. They are the life of those memories we have 
attempted to recall to you to-day. You hold in your hands the 
power to mould, in a very large degree, the opinions of our 
masses. We look with solicitude, not unmixed with pride and 
hope, as you move on in your stupendous mission. You wield 
a mighty weapon, and direct the most amazing force. The great 
Briareus of the printing art, scattering the sheets hourly like 
snow-flakes, is at your service to do your bidding ; and the pulse 
of his giant heart, as it throws its diurnal circulation to every 
extremity, and falls along the tenderest nerve of every human 
interest, is giving tone and temper to the sum total of this 
instinctive and untiring people. You have the clue and the key, 
gentlemen, to their future destiny. Ah ! do not miss the mark, 
and lead them wrong — like Polyphemus, strong but blind. 

III. I call, too, upon the gentlemen of the Bar, and all who, 
before the people, or on the bench, or in the halls of legislation, 
are gifted with the power of public speech. The memories of 
the Metropolis must especially invoke you : the very air seems to 
breathe around us here something of the power and elevation of 
eloquence devoted to the welfare of America. Gentlemen, the 
laws are in your hands, and you are to conserve the purity of 
justice, and teach this great people its practice. You have it for 
a privilege to defend our Constitution — a document which as it 
has seemed to me to be almost inspired from heaven, as the only 



20 

fitting and continual altar of the national sacrifice, and that 
alone on which the vestal fire will burn. This is the earnest 
lesson of your calling. You have no need to become demagogues 
or hypocrites, no need for the chicanery and the scrambling of 
parties. If 3'ou^o but speak right out the eternal principles of 
the early jurists and expounders of our Government, you will 
speak to the great heart of the people ; and you know, if we have 
correctly stated the theory of our civil polity, there must be a 
spirit of loyalty to the organic life and law of the system, or the 
strength of the Government is paralyzed. Oh ! gentlemen, you 
have a heavy and solemn work. May you have Solon's wisdom, 
Cato's integrity, and Tully's silver tongue ! And for the shades of 
the illustrious dead in whose presence we seem almost to stand, 
and for the dear sake of all those hallowed monuments, do not 
fail in any tittle of your great mission. 

IV. I would appeal to all the parents and guardians of our 
youth, to inculcate, at the earliest period of life, the sentiments of 
our fathers — let them not be hidden from the children — that they 
too may learn, and learning, venerate the things that were done 
among us in times of old. Let me entreat you to educate the 
children. They shall have neither mental enjoyment nor social 
position, nor even the capability of self-government, without. It 
was one of the earliest principles, deep-rooted in our soil, that 
information and science are the bulwarks of liberty. Preserve 
the colleges, and seminaries, and the free common schools, as 
you would your hearth-stones and your homes. We can indeed 
do without Cambridge and Oxford, and the French and German 
universities, because our Republican institutions are simpler and 
more straightforward : they will make every town in the nation 
to be what Athens or what Sparta was — the Damasimbortor-— 
the. "tamer of men." That is our great glory more than all our 
material prosperities. Our business is to look after the essential 



21 

interests of mind, and quarry, from these thousands of children, 
(each child the jewel of his mother, and precious as Cornelia's were 
to her,) the future pillars of our country's citizenship. Oh ! let it 
be done, I beseech you 1 Let neither the struggle for bodily sub- 
sistence, nor the conflict of manifold opinions, nor the subtlety 
of civil or ecclesiastical encroachment, prevent us in this funda- 
mental labor ! Remember the boys and girls who will stand 
where we now stand in the next generation ; for that day of 
responsibility and action they need a thorough knowledge and 
discipline. Whatever else you do, give such men and women to 
the next age. They will be castle-gates more formidable than the 
great Hexapylum ! The tendency of these times is to the sur- 
face, to volubility and froth, and great swelling words of vanity. 
Sink down into the youthful mind so many fathoms deep the 
solid learning of a wise education, and then when the light- 
house rises there in coming times, no billow can break up the 
foundations, no cloud obscure the clear beam which shines thence 
away over the sea of human commotion. 

V. And lastly, I would call on the Ministers of Religion — those 
men whose life it is to show the way to heaven by the avenue of 
the Cross. It belongs to the American people to cherish the chris- 
tian faith of our fathers, and to hold fast by the principles of the 
Bible in toleration and charity. It belongs to the American 
ministry to keep the pure flame burning in the great heart of 
the nation by the hopes of a christian immortality. Deep faith 
in God and eternity was the foundation strength of the men of 
the Revolution. No flippant skepticism disgraced them — no 
scandal of infidelity blighted the character of their great works. 
They were made of a sterner stuff and of a nobler mould ; they 
had many creeds, it is true, but the vinculum of all was in their 
unqualified and unwavering trust in Jehovah, and in the constant 
recognition of his Providence ; and thus they have shown to the 



22 

generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and 
his wondrous works that he hath done ! The nation was founded 
in their prayers and tears, baptized by their blood, and de- 
voted to the Almighty by their sublime and invincible faith ; 
the very corner-stones of the Metropolis were planted in crying and 
supplication to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. The nations 
that had not this religion have perished. Our catastrophe will 
never come if we abide by its principles. Now, therefore, by all 
the motives that can most stir the blood and the spirit of Repub- 
licans, by the deep and solemn life of religion itself, by the mys- 
teries of death, and the morning of the millenium, when all that 
is truly heroic in the history of man will be clothed with a new 
and another immortality, do I invoke the ministrations of the 
Pulpit, to imbue this ever-growing people with the spirit of that 
unseen but eternal power the sound of whose going is like the 
rush of armies — that spiritual, mighty wind, filling every heart 
and every house of habitation — that gift of prophetic devotion 
which drives men perpetually to the worship of the Deity — that 
new creation which passes over the millions, and they come forth, 
in a resurrection of beauty and of glory, at the voice of the 
Almighty. 

And now, in conclusion, I call upon you, one and all, to pay 
thanksgiving for all the memories which cluster about us in the 
Providence of God, and which kindle to-day so many fires of 
gladness through all our borders, and stimulate so many hopes of 
the coming future. Let us thank the Bountiful Giver of our 
lineage and our estate, and from this day take new courage and 
go forward. Let us therefore glory wisely as unto Jehovah for 
the works that he did in the days of our fathers in the times of 
old. Let us glory in this growing greatness of the Republic, and 
in the seat and temple of American empire, towards which the 
eyes and prayers of all the sovereign tribes are this day 



23 

doubtless turned. Let us glory in the men who here first made 
the timbers crackle before the axe and flame, and in the impulse 
of freedom and of faith which we ever had from them. Alas ! 
how many of them are sleeping to-day in the places of sepulture 
hallowed by their fame ; and the few that were of them, and still 
linger as if to watch the country's and the city's rising grandeur, 
will soon go to carry some better tidings of nobler things still 
done — that meeting, if such spirits ever meet beyond the return- 
less bourn, it may be to say, " The city hath a pleasant sight and 
glorious hopes for the future,, and our sons are there full of our 
blood and courage ; and the great web of our national story will 
they weave on, till, coming to join us here, they leave it to their 
sons to weave it still!" — a web of august memories as lasting 
as that rising and, we trust, imperishable monument, to which, in 
recognition of the gift of God in our great "Washington, we ask 
you to-day, before retiring to the scenes of your family festiv- 
ities, to pay the votive oflferings of so free and so proud 
Americans ! 



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